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Ambitious Documentary 'Planet Earth' Spanned 5 Years, 61 Countries

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 March 2007, 15:00 CDT

TV has plenty of shows that are tiny, tidy and intimate.

Now comes the opposite - a documentary series about every place, everywhere. "Planet Earth" debuts Sunday.

"It isn't just television," says Jane Root, general manager of the Discovery Channel. "It's far, far bigger. You have images that make you look at the whole world in a new way."

That begins with a sweeping hour that is called "Pole to Pole," without exaggeration. Cameras span from the Arctic to the Antarctic, catching changes of seasons and settings.

It's the start of an 11-hour series, sprawled over five Sundays, that grabs viewers with its:

- Sheer size. Root says the project took five years with "more than 200 locations, 71 camera people and everything, everything filmed in high definition." It was done by the BBC, which calls it a $25 million project, filmed in 61 countries.

- Technical advances. Mark Brownlow, one of the filmmakers, raves about the "highly sophisticated, gyro-stabilized long-lens camera system that sits on the nose of a helicopter ... you can hover 1,000- feet-plus above the subject and not disturb it. This has never been done before."

- And the human factor. These are things filmed by unusual people, in unusual places.

Huw Cordey and his crew descended the 1,600 feet to the base of Lechuguilla, in Carlsbad, N.M. With guides arriving daily with new supplies, the filmmakers filmed underground caves that extend more than 100 miles.

"We spent 10 days trying to capture the majesty of the place," he says.

Brownlow traveled over Angel Falls in Venezuela, in a 30-year- old helicopter whose pilot had survived five crashes.

"For 20 minutes, the clouds parted," he says. "And the falls were lit up, and glorious sunshine, rainbows, just at the moment when we were scooting along the top of the river that feeds the falls.

"And then you (fly) over the void; the ground drops away. It's a thousand-meter drop and your heart is in your mouth."

Then there's Doug Allan, who specializes in cold, distant places.

Short, stocky and Scottish, Allan has done it all. He was a prime filmmaker for Discovery's lush "Blue Planet" and for its "Everest: Beyond the Limits."

One key stop this time was Kong Karls Land, an island in the Norwegian Arctic.

"Two of us stayed and spent the better part of five weeks working from a cabin," Allan says. There were plenty of polar bears to see, even when they weren't wanted. "We would get a lot of bear visits every night in our cabin," Allan says. "We'd get bears coming right up to the window."

But his goal was to film a mother bear and her cubs, emerging from hibernation. That involved a threemile hike from the cabin with the equipment on a sledge (authorities had banned snowmobiles).

"I was kind of feeling the Arctic like a bear would feel it," Allan says. "You could tell the different textures of snow underneath your feet. You could tell ... the difference between minus-35 and minus-30 (degrees Celsius)."

It took three weeks before they were able to catch a bear emerging from a den. For the next 12 days, they were there throughout the day, filming Mom and cubs as they toyed with the outside world.

On the final day, Allan was returning to the den site when he spotted something new. "No more than 100 meters away was this bear leaving the den, heading down for the sea ice for the first time with her cubs."

Allan ran to get the sledge and equipment, then raced to set up.

"The very last hour of the whole shoot, I spent watching that bear ... It was such a perfect ending to probably the best, most satisfying shoot that I've done."

On the tube:

- What: "Planet Earth."

- Where: Discovery, cable channel 30.

- When: Series launches at 7 p.m. Sunday with "Pole to Pole,""Mountains" at 8, "Deep Ocean" at 9.

- Then: Four more Sundays, 7-9 p.m. with "Deserts" and "Ice Worlds" on April 1, "Shallow Seas" and "Great Plains" on April 8, "Jungles" and "Fresh Water" on April 15, and "Forests" and "Caves" on April 22.

Source: Tulsa World

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